Theories and causes of crime

Introduction

There is no one ‘cause’ of crime. Crime is a highly complex phenomenon that changes across
cultures and across time. Activities that are legal in one country (e.g. alcohol consumption in the
UK) are sometimes illegal in others (e.g. strict Muslim countries).

As cultures change over time, behaviours that once were not criminalised may become
criminalised (and then decriminalised again – e.g. alcohol prohibition in the USA). As a result,
there is no simple answer to the question ‘what is crime?’ and therefore no single answer to
‘what causes crime?’ Different types of crime often have their own distinct causes.

These causes of crime can be classified into three main categories as biological, psychological
and sociological.

socio-biological factors such as low intelligence, poor diet, impulsivity and hyperactivity,
hormones such as testosterone and cortisol, and environmental pollutants may all affect a
person's biological propensity for criminal or antisocial behaviour.

Most social problems, particularly violent and antisocial behaviors, result from criminal actions.

Several factors such as inadequate housing, poverty, high levels of social inequality, low self-
esteem, and low educational attainment might be the significant causes of individual
involvement in criminal behaviors.

The above types of criminality are related to an increased risk of conviction due to other factors
such as environmental, psychological, and social issues.

Among young males, compelling at least one criminal offense is perceived to be expected since
about one-third have a history of conviction by age 30 in most nations.

Recent reports from the criminal justice system report higher rates of criminality in men and
women.

There are several crimes and illegal activities that examine criminal behaviors within society. For
instance, trajectory theory, life course theory, and shared theories examine criminal behaviors
among people in society.

Society Response to Criminal Behaviors in terms of Prevention and Punishment

In most cases, deviance involves behaviors that violate social norms and lead to adverse social

reactions. Some characters in society are considered harmful by the authority, which leads to the

creation of written laws that prohibit such behaviors.

Crime is typical behavior that violates such laws and is commonly a significant type of deviance

that concerns many people. Because deviance and crime lead to adverse social reactions within

society, individuals have to ensure that society members generally abide by their interaction's

social norms.

Society develops social control, which they use to prevent and sanction behaviors that violate

social standards. There are informal and formal social control whereby informal social control

deals with actions that violate informal norms and later control behaviors violating the formal

norms.

Individuals typically decline to violate informal standards due to the fear of risking others'

negative perspectives others negative perspectives. These reactions and several other related

examples of informal social control include ridicule, anger, and disappointment.

However, formal social management such as the legal system such as (judges, prosecutors, law

enforcement) and other local and federal agencies. Through the legal system, society prevents

and punishes criminal behaviors in various ways. For instance, through rehabilitation, the

organization believes that punishment can prevent future crime.

This act suggests that the law offenders' destructive behaviors can be reformed. Rehabilitation

engages various aspects such as education and vocational Programme, skills training, counseling,

and intervention programs. Rehabilitation meant for preventing future crimes suggest that
criminal behaviors are not related to rational choice, but they depend on social pressures and

psychological difficulties.

Another control measure is incapacitation, which assumes that the government can protect the

society from future offenses. The efforts are achieved through a form of incarceration that

prevents upcoming crimes through disabling and restricting the offender's movement, ability to

commit other crimes, as well as their liberty. The extreme form of incarceration is through the

death penalty, which most people criticize since civil rights suggest that everyone has a right to

life.

Other forms of punishment such as curfew, house arrest, imprisonment, and electric monitoring

can be best to initiate punishment for criminal behaviors.

Society also uses retribution to offer sentences to criminal behaviors despite being the oldest

justification of punishment. The theory suggests that all individuals committing a crime deserve

to be punished since they are rational beings. They can make informed decisions, revealing that

breaking the rule is rational and conscious.

Trajectory Theory

In society, individuals are made of two categories, those who abide by the law and those who

ignore the law's rules. This has to do with the genetic makeup and gender of such individuals

who commit crimes or abide by the law.

Many theories explain a different aspect of how individuals join into criminal activities. For

instance, the trajectory theory suggests that various factors encourage delinquent behavior based

on the multiple crime pathways. The theory believes that several trajectories make an individual

perform delinquent behavior at higher rates than other trajectories. The theory determines
possible trajectories such as biological, psychological, sociological, behavioral, and

environmental, leading people towards delinquent behaviors.

Biological trajectories involve the aspects of heredity and brain abnormalities that have

been perceived to predict criminal behaviors. The theory states that individuals are born

criminals and cannot stop committing criminal activities.

It also suggests that such criminals cannot control themselves either due to mental or physical

disability.

The theory reveals that most males are frequent law offenders due to cases involving criminal

behaviors than their female counterparts (Piquero et al., 2015).

This act results from higher rates of aggression and specific types of mental disorders in males,

which leads to criminal behaviors.

Psychological trajectories reveal that specific mental illnesses and personality types are always

related to higher criminal behavior rates. Research shows that most of the problems relating to

depression, aggression, anxiety and low intelligence are mostly linked to criminal behaviors.

Sociological trajectories suggest that individuals either engage or do not engage in criminal

activities based on the social surroundings and that they are highly influenced by how others

rewards or model the behaviors.

A social environment such as low socioeconomic status, inadequate resources, and low-income

neighbors is familiar with criminal actions. The social surrounding, especially for children,

predicts delinquency. It is usually taken as a home environment and as a peer.

Those with weak social relationships either at home or with friends are more likely to develop

criminal behaviors than those having strong relationships. Behavioral trajectories believe that

both adults' and adolescents' involvement in criminal actions possess predictive behaviors even

at a younger age of 3-years.

Some other behaviors that can manifest early on and are linked to the future of criminal

behaviors include aggression, violence, lack of empathy, and impulsiveness. Most of the actions

ingrained within individuals are difficult to change due to strong establishment, especially since

childhood.

Life Course Theory

As compared to the trajectory theory, the life course approach is guided by several

significant characteristics. These traits include the individual socio-historical and geographical

location, heterogeneity or variability, timing of lives, the link lives and how the past shapes the

future.

Social-historical and geographical location examines how people's development pathway is

surrounded in and changed by circumstances and occurrence of proceedings during the historical

period and their place in which they live.

For instance, geopolitical events, social and cultural ideologies and economic factors can

significantly shape individuals' beliefs and choices, hence altering human development. This act

suggests that human beings' behaviors and decisions do not happen in a vacuum since

individuals and families tend to relate within socio-historical time.

The only way for policymakers and scholars to identify situations that affect people's respective

life histories is to understand the various cohort's location in respect to historical context.
Timing of lives involves three aspects relating to life course perspective: generational time,

individual time, and historical time. Individual time is commonly linked to chronological age,

which assumes that life periods such as adolescence, childhood, and old age affect an individual's

positions, rights in society, roles that relate to culturally shared age definitions.

Generation time relates to the age groups or cohorts in which individuals are groups according to

their ages in society. For instance, people born between 1946 and 1964 are usually known as the

baby boom generation (Pratt, 2016).

Historical time involves the societal changes or occurrences and how they impact people and

families, such as political and economic changes as well as the innovations in technology and

wars,

Heterogeneity is also known as diversity in structures or processes, suggests that individuals

should consider moral or average developmental and transitional trends and variability.

It suggests that cohort shares perspectives due to the common sharing of age groups. However,

cohorts cannot be referred to as a homogeneous collection of individuals since they differ in

basing on various factors such as social class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and family structure.

Linked lives and social ties stress that individuals' lives are mutually dependent and equally

connected on separate levels. The theory suggests that society and individuals' experiences are

connected by the family and the existing link of shared relationships.

This act suggests that macro-level events involving wars tend to affect people's behaviors, an

aspect that can affect family ties. Other aspects such as family member death also affect

individual relationships since they tend to trigger stress and vulnerability patterns or enhance

adaptive behaviors and family resilience.

Additionally, the personality traits of a person also affect the coping styles of families and the

functioning and well-being of individuals.

Human agency and personal control suggest that individuals are active agents based on the life

course theory. Apart from individuals mediating the impacts of social construction, they also

make judgments and develop objectives that shape the social construction.

However, an individual's ability to make choices greatly depends on constraints and

opportunities. For instance, the idea of control cycles involves families and people transforming

their prospects and behaviors while responding to changes in either needs or resources.

The last principle is how the past shapes the future. This perception suggests that early life

course decisions, conditions, and opportunities affect future results. Therefore, past events are

significant in shaping an individual’s present and future actions, which can be anticipated as a

ripple or domino effect. The timing conditions based on past life events and behavior, such as

school dropouts, can set up chain reactions and experiences for individuals and their families.

This lecture provides an overview of some of the key criminological theories that seek to
explain the causes of crime; it is by no means an exhaustive list.

Each of the theories covered has its own strengths and weaknesses, has gaps and may only be
applicable to certain types of crime, and not others. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ theory.

The theories covered can be categorised into two main approaches:

1) Biological theories

2) Sociological theories

Biological Positivism

In the 19th Century, Italian prison psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso drew on the ideas of Charles
Darwin and suggested that criminals were atavistic: essentially ‘evolutionary throwbacks’.
He suggested that their brains were mal-developed or not fully developed. In his review of
prisoners, he found that they shared a number of common physical attributes, such as sloping
foreheads and receding chins.

In so doing, Lombroso suggested that involvement in crime was a product of biology and
biological characteristics: criminals were born that way. Lombroso’s theory is essentially a
theory of biological positivism.

Positivism: Influenced by the scientific discoveries of the 18th and 19th centuries, positivism is a
research tradition that seeks to establish objective causes of individual behaviour.

1) Biological theories

Biological explanations of crime assume that some people are ‘born criminals’, who are
physiologically distinct from non-criminals. The most famous proponent of this approach is
Cesare Lombroso.

Lombroso’s work has long since fallen out of favour. However, biological theories have
continued to develop. Rather than measuring physical features of the body, contemporary
approaches focus on:

 Biochemical conditions (e.g. linked to poor diet or hormone imbalance)

 Neurophysiological conditions (e.g. learning disabilities caused by brain damage)

 Genetic inheritance and/or abnormality

 Intelligence

These attempts, to locate the causes of crime within the individual, suggest that there are
identifiable differences between offenders and non-offenders. In other words, the criminal is
‘other’: in some way different or abnormal to everyone else.

Sociological theories

Sociological approaches suggest that crime is shaped by factors external to the individual: their
experiences within the neighbourhood, the peer group, and the family

The Chicago School/Social Disorganisation Theory

Social disorganisation theory grew out of research conducted by sociologists at the University of
Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s.

It key proponents were Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay (1942), who used spatial
mapping to examine the residential locations of juveniles referred to court.
Shaw and McKay found that patterns of delinquency were higher in areas characterised by poor
housing, poor health, socio-economic disadvantage and transient populations.

This led them to suggest that crime was a function of neighbourhood dynamics and not due to
individual actors and their actions.

Shaw and McKay explained these patterns by reference to the problems that accompanied
immigration to Chicago at this time. They claimed that areas settled by newly arrived immigrants
experienced a breakdown of social norms due to ethnic diversity and competing cultural
traditions.

Conventional institutions of social control were therefore weakened and unable to regulate the
behaviour of local youths.

Contemporary theories of crime, place and space include:

 defensible space theory, which examines how the design of physical space is related to crime;
 broken windows theory, which looks the relationship between low level disorder and crime;

 routine activities theory, which considers how opportunities to commit crime are shaped by
between people’s everyday movements through space and time.

Social Control Theory

Strictly speaking control theory does not address the causes of crime, but rather focuses on why
people obey the law. In other words, it explains conformity rather than deviance.

It is primarily associated with the work of Travis Hirschi (1969), an America social scientist who
proposed that people general conform to social norms due to strong social bonds. Conversely,
they engage in delinquent acts when these bonds are broken or weak. The key components of
social bonds are:

 Attachment: How strong or weak is an individual’s relationship with others? Do these others
expect certain kinds of behaviour (such as obeying the law) from this individual? The stronger
the attachment and the stronger the expectations, the more likely it is that the individual will
conform.

 Commitment: The more an individual commits his/herself to a particular lifestyle (for

example, being married, being a parent, having a job), the more he/she has to lose if he/she
becomes involved in crime (and sodeviate from the lifestyle).

 Involvement: This component comes down to time – the more time the individual spends
engaging in law abiding behaviour, the less time he/she has to engage in law breaking behaviour.
 Belief: this relates to upbringing. If an individual has been brought up to be law abiding, they
are less likely to become involved in crime.

Control theory is one of the most frequently used and tested criminological theories.

Right Realism/Rational Choice Theory

This branch of criminology sees individuals as rational actors: individuals are capable of making
their own choices, which includes choosing to commit crime.

In any course of action, individuals weigh up the likely benefits and disadvantages of each
action.

Right realism emerged in the USA and the UK around the 1980s, in response to rising crime
rates and a perceived failure of sociological approaches to adequately address the real causes of
crime.

Prominent right realists such as James Q. Wilson (1975) and Charles Murray (1990) come from
political backgrounds and claim that criminological theory should inform criminal justice policy.

One of the key theories to emerge from this branch of criminology is rational choice theory,
associated with the work of Cornish and Clarke (1986).

According to this theory, individuals not only decide to commit crime, but decide when and
where to commit crime.

As Walklate observes, this theory lends itself to the range of policy initiatives known as
situational crime prevention, sometimes referred to as designing out crime. This is the umbrella
term for a range of strategies that are used to reduce the opportunities to commit crime.

Examples of this strategy include:

 Increasing formal surveillance measures such as CCTV and alarms, and the Neighbourhood
Watch scheme

 Increasing natural surveillance such as improving street lighting

 Concealing or removing ‘targets’ e.g. ‘high value’ goods such as mobile phones, cash and
jewellery

Left Realism/Relative Deprivation

Left realism is a branch of critical criminology that developed in the UK and the USA in the
1980s.
It suggests that crime disproportionately affects the lives of the poor and disadvantaged. Key
proponents include Lea and Young (1984) and Elliot Currie (1985).

One of the key concepts of left realism is relative deprivation. Closely associated with anomie
theory, relative deprivation suggests that crime happens when individuals or groups see
themselves as being unfairly disadvantaged compared to other individuals or groups who they
see as being similar to themselves.

Since the disadvantage is perceived and determined by an individual, it is a subjective

assessment.

Some situational crime prevention and includes measures such as those as approaches that
extend beyond the “situation”’ which involve restricting access to weapons and alcohol and
investing in diversionary activities (such as engagement in sport) to encourage people to engage
in pro social, rather than anti-social, activities (such as crime).

Left realists also support two other key theories to explain crime:

 Marginalisation: some groups experience marginalisation and at different levels (social,

political and economic). These groups are on the periphery of society. Lacking political
representation, these groups represent themselves and their ways of taking political action
include the commission of crime and violence.

 Sub-cultures: marginalised individuals and groups may come into contact with others who
share these experiences, and who then may form their own sub cultures in which crime and
violence may feature.

Feminist Perspectives/Gender

Feminist perspectives share a concern with gender inequality, pointing to the fact that crime is
disproportionately committed by men.

Feminist criminologists such as Elizabeth Stanko (1985) have paid particular attention to male
violence against women, explaining its occurrence by reference to wider structures of oppression
– as well as gendered norms regarding ‘appropriate’ masculine and feminine behaviour.

One concept used by feminist perspectives to explain the maleness of crime is hegemonic
masculinity: the set of ideas, values, representations and practices associated with ‘being male’
which is commonly accepted as the dominant position in gender relations in a society at a
particular historical moment.

In contemporary Western society, the dominant or hegemonic masculinity is expressed through

paid employment (perhaps being the ‘bread winner’ in the household); being heterosexual; and
subordinating women.
Criminologist James W.Messerschmidt (1993) argues that for some men, in certain groups, men
do masculinity (that is, express their masculinity) through the engagement and commission of
crime.

THEORIES RELATED TO PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

One of the oldest scientific approaches in criminology theory emphasizes physical and biological
abnormality as the distinguishing mark of the criminal.

In this approach criminals are viewed as somehow different, abnormal, defective, and therefore
inferior biologically.

This biological inferiority is thought to produce certain physical characteristics that make the
appearance of criminals different from that of non-criminals.

Early criminologists studied the physical appearance of criminals in an attempt to identify these
characteristics. The real explanation of criminal behaviour, in this view, is biological
defectiveness and inferiority— physical and other characteristics are only symptoms of that
inferiority.

Physiognomy and Phrenology

Physiognomy deals with making judgments about people’s character from the appearance of
their faces. In 1775, John Caspar Lavater, in the book, “Physiognomical Fragments”,
systematised many popular observations and made many extravagant claims about the alleged
relation between facial features and human conduct.

For example, beardlessness in men and its opposite, the bearded woman, were both considered
unfavourable trait indicators, as were a “shifty” eye, a “weak” chin, an “arrogant” nose, and so
on.

Such given classifications are of little significance today. The principal importance of
physiognomy lies in the impetus it gave to the better-organised and logically more impressive
view that came to be known as phrenology.

Phrenology focused on the external shape of the skull instead of the appearance of the face.
Based originally on Aristotle’s idea of the brain as the organ of the mind, phrenologists assumed
that the exterior of the skull conformed to its interior and therefore to the shape of the brain.
 Different faculties or functions of the mind were assumed to be associated with different parts of
the brain. Therefore, the exterior shape of the skull would indicate how the mind functioned.

The eminent European anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is generally given credit for the
systematic development of the doctrines of phrenology, though he did not originate or make
much use of that term.

In 1791 he started publishing materials on the relations between head conformations and the
personal characteristics of individuals.

Gall listed twenty-six special faculties of the brain including faculties described as amativeness,

conjugality, philoprogenitiveness (love of off spring), friendliness, combativeness,

destructiveness, acquisitiveness, cautiousness, self-esteem, firmness, benevolence,
constructiveness, ideality, and imitativeness. These were said to be grouped into three regions or
compartments:-

1) “Lower” or active propensities,

2) Moral sentiments, and

3) The intellectual faculties.

Crime was said to involve the lower propensities, notably amativeness, philoprogenitiveness,
combativeness, secretiveness, and acquisitiveness. These propensities, however, could be held in
restraint by the moral sentiments or the intellectual faculties, in which case no crime would be
committed.

Character and human conduct were thus conceived as equilibrium in the pull of these opposite
forces. Animal propensities might impel the individual to crime, but they would be opposed by
the higher sentiments and intelligence. Just as other organs were strengthened by exercise and
enfeebled by disuse, so were the “organs” of the mind. Careful training of the child, and even of
the adult, in right living would strengthen the “organs” of desirable faculties and inhibit through
disuse the lower propensities with their concomitants of crime and vice.

The obvious scientific criticism of the phrenological theory of crime was that no one was able to
observe the physiological “organs” of the mind or their relation to particular types of behaviour.
The most serious obstacle to its acceptance by the public, however, was the deterministic nature
of its analysis.

If human conduct were the result of the organs of the mind, then people’s fate was in the hands
of their anatomy and physiology. This view was rejected and opposed by teachers, preachers,
judges, and other leaders who influenced public opinion, because it contradicted one of their
most cherished ideas, namely that humans are masters of their own conduct and capable of
making of themselves what they will.

Body Type Theories: Sheldon to Cortes

Some of the more interesting attempts at relating criminal behaviour to physical appearance are
the so-called body type theories. The body type theorists argue that there is a high degree of
correspondence between the physical appearance of the body and the temperament of the mind.

The book of William Sheldon, on delinquent youth, is a good example of a body type theory.
Sheldon took his underlying ideas and terminology of types from the fact that a human begins
life as an embryo that is essentially a tube made up of three different tissue layers, namely, an
inner layer (or endoderm), a middle layer (or mesoderm), and an outer layer (or ectoderm).

Sheldon then constructed a corresponding physical and mental typology consistent with the
known facts from embryology and the physiology of development.

Sheldon’s basic type characteristics of physique and temperament are briefly summarized in the
following scheme:

Each person possesses the characteristics of the three types to a greater or lesser degree. Sheldon
therefore used three numbers, each between 1 and 7, to indicate the extent to which the
characteristics of the three types were present in a given individual. For example, a person whose
somatotype is 7-1-4 would possess many endomorphic characteristics, few mesomorphic
characteristics, and an average number of ectomorphic characteristics.

Sheldon presented individual case histories of 200 young males who had a period of contact,
during the decade 1939-1949in a rehabilitation home for boys in Boston. He found that these
youths were decidedly high in mesomorphy and low in ectomorphy, with the average somatotype
being 3.5-4.6-2.7.

Sheldon had earlier studied 200 college students who were apparently nondelinquents, and had
found that the average somatotype was 3.2-3.8-3.4.

The two groups were matched in terms of age, general intelligence, ethic-racial derivation, and
residence in underprivileged areas.

Photographs of the boys were mixed together and then visually assessed for the predominant
body type. By this method 60.1 per cent of the delinquents, but only 30.7 per cent of the non-
delinquents, were found to be mesomorphs. The analysis included

Physique
1) Endomorphic:relatively great development of digestive viscera; tendency to put on fat; soft
roundness through various regions of the body; short tapering limbs; small bones; soft, smooth,
velvety skin.

2) Mesomorphic: relative predominance of muscles, bone, and the motor organs of the body;
large trunks; heavy chest; large wrists and hands; if “lean”, a hard rectangularity of outline; if
“not lean”, they fill out heavily.

3) Ectomorphic: relative predominance of skin and its appendages, which includes the nervous
system; lean, fragile, delicate body; small, delicate bones; droopy shoulders; small face, sharp
nose, fine hair; relatively little body mass and relatively great surface area.

Temperament

1) Viscerotonic; general relaxation of body; a comfortable person; loves soft luxury; a “softie”
but still essentially an extrovert.

2) Somotonic: active, dynamic, person; walks, talks, gestures assertively; behaves aggressively.
3) Cerebrotonic: an intrivent; full of functional complaints, allergies, skin troubles, chronic
fatigue, insomnia; sensitive to noise and distractions; shrinks from crowds